Manila has duty of protection

A total of 12 kidnappings, 10 murders and three robberies targeted at Chinese citizens have occurred in the Philippines from Jan 1 to Sept 18, in which 18 Chinese nationals were killed and another 12 were victims of thefts, statistics from the Chinese Embassy in the Philippines have indicated.

US should respect sovereignty of others

US President Barack Obama likes to talk about international laws and respect for other nations' sovereignty, but he himself violated it blatantly on Tuesday when he ordered airstrikes in Syria.

Look behind promotions

SO, LIU TIENAN, THE DISGRACED FORMER chief of the National Energy Administration and deputy director of the National Development and Reform Commission, is not one of a kind.

Public can help bust corruption

When two years ago a journalist reported Liu Tienan was involved in corruption, the National Energy Administration, where Liu served as director, accused him of "blasphemy" and threatened to "resort to official, legal means".

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Enhancing global climate governance

The UN Climate Summit, held in New York on Tuesday, was not regarded as part of the negotiations for the 21st Conference of Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in 2015, which is supposed to reach a new multilateral legal agreement to enhance the implementation of the convention, rather an opportunity to create a constructive and cooperative political atmosphere for the parties to express their political will and enhanced pledges to address climate change.

Their deaths are as light as a feather

Repeated reports about officials committing suicide remind me of late chairman Mao Zedong's division of death into two kinds: those that weigh even heavier than a mountain and those that are as light as a feather. The suicides of most officials should belong to the latter if they did it simply because they were scared of being investigated about their alleged corruption or because they wanted to prevent others from being revealed.

Democratic shoes that fit

SHOES SHOULD NOT NECESSARILY BE THE same as those of others, but they must fit one's feet. Likewise the way to govern should not necessarily be the same, but it must bring real benefits to the people. President Xi Jinping made such remarks on Sunday in his speech delivered at the 65th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference.

Democracy is not decoration

Before exercising their legal rights to vote and decide matters of common concern, the Chinese people will discuss them through the platform of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference so as to reach some basic consensus first and avoid social disintegration; that's a special form of deliberative democracy in China. That form is especially important today, because we need the common efforts of the whole society to propel the reform forward for the common good.

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HK democracy project on right track

Some college students in Hong Kong started a week-long class boycott from Sept 22 in "protest" against the reform plan for the 2017 chief executive (CE) election. It seems the "protesters", in their misplaced pursuit of "democracy and true freedom", have failed to realize that the reform plan is best suited to democracy in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.

'Silk road' diplomacy for inclusive growth

President Xi Jinping floated the idea of a new Silk Road economic Belt and 21st Century Maritime Silk Road last year, and his just concluded four-nation visit to Central and South Asia is expected to make the concept a policy priority.